The sea screamed long before the world understood why.
At first it was only a shiver in the deep. Whales changed their songs mid-phrase. Shoals of fish veered from their ancient migratory paths. A storm that should have broken on the western reefs curled away, whirling aimlessly as if forgetting what it had been born to do.
Then the hum came.
Not sound. Not exactly. A pressure behind the eyes and inside the bones, as if the ocean itself were grinding its teeth. Men on distant ships woke choking, clutching at their chests. Shore birds fled inland. On islands half a world away, priests of gods who had never spoken with the sea suddenly fell to their knees, hands over their ears, weeping without knowing why.
In the heart of the ocean, where the water glowed faintly with its own light, Lyriath shone under a bruised sky.
The city rose from the sea like a dream carved into reality and then improved upon. Coral towers spiraled upward, latticed with pearl-veined bridges and walkways that thrummed with song. Luminescent gardens spread in terraces along the sides of living spires, their fronds moving in time with the music carried on the currents. Gates of seashell and stone opened directly onto open water, where Siren sentinels watched astride currents like other races watched from walls.
Lyriath had been the Siren answer to the gods' arrogance: We can make something as wondrous as anything you ever shaped.
It had succeeded.
Tonight, it felt like a monument waiting for its own epitaph.
Ryainne, Queen of Lyriath, stood alone on the highest terrace of the Harmonic Temple. The wind was harsher here, unsoftened by melody or spell-song. It tore at her hair and robes, sending silver-blue strands snapping like banners. She braced her hands against the cool coral railing and stared out at the horizon.
The sky was wrong.
Clouds that should have been white and high were low and swollen, tinged with faint purples and sickly greens. The sun was a dim coin behind them, its light smeared thin and smeared again, as if painted on water and then smudged by a careless thumb.
Lyriath trembled under her bare feet. Not much—just enough for the vibrations to run up her legs and into her spine.
Every shiver carried the same message: cracking, cracking, cracking.
Behind her, the great crystal core of the Harmonic Temple pulsed a steady blue. Beneath that, far below the roots of the city, the Tide Engine replied with a slower, deeper thump.
It had been dormant for centuries. Dormant was safe.
Now it was waking, and it was furious.
A door opened behind her with a soft hiss of displaced water. Ryainne didn't turn. She didn't need the sound; the bond told her who it was.
Small feet. Breath hitched with fear. Heart beating too fast.
"Mother…"
She turned then.
Calypsa ran toward her from the archway, tripping over the hem of her own trailing dress. Her little feet were wet from the temple pools, leaving prints that glowed faintly where they touched the terrace floor. Tears had cut clean tracks down her cheeks, streaking through the dust of ritual ash and crushed shell.
Ryainne dropped to one knee and caught her, arms wrapping around her tiny frame with a fierceness that surprised her. She had known this child would not be safe in this Cycle. She had not quite admitted to herself how unsafe until she saw the sky ripping itself open.
Calypsa buried her face in her mother's robes. "Make it stop."
"I will if I can," Ryainne murmured, pressing her lips to her daughter's hair. It smelled like salt and crushed coral, like temple incense and childhood. "Don't look at the sky, little tide."
"It's loud," Calypsa whispered. Her voice shook. She was Siren-blooded. Harmony gifted. She heard more than others. "I heard them. In the deep. They were calling my name."
Ryainne's hands tightened on her shoulders before she forced herself to ease up. "What did they say?"
"Just my name. Over and over. Like they were…laughing." Calypsa's fingers twisted in the fabric. "I don't like it."
The Abyss whispered to those with strong Harmony. The Abyssal King could not yet walk the streets of Lyriath, but his presence slithered through the currents when reality got thin.
Calypsa was far too young to hear him.
Ryainne drew in a slow breath, tasting copper and ozone beneath the salt.
It's starting sooner than we thought.
She glanced past her daughter at the open archway. Inside the Harmonic Temple, the priestesses sang in low voices, harmonizing with the crystal core to keep the city calm. Their songs of reassurance had taken on a desperate edge. She could hear it even at this distance.
The Tide Engine surged again.
The terrace vibrated, rattling the shell ornaments hanging from the eaves. A nearby statue—a goddess carved in ancient days, with a shell crown and eyes of inset pearl—cracked down the middle, falling into two neat pieces.
Calypsa jumped.
"What was that?"
"The Engine," Ryainne said softly. "It's waking up."
"It sounds angry."
"It has reason to be." She stood, taking her daughter's hand and leading her toward the terrace's edge. "Look."
Calypsa peeked around her arm.
From up here, the whole of Lyriath spread out beneath them in concentric rings. The lower districts hugged the water, markets and plazas and training halls vibrant with light and song. The upper rings housed scholars, engineers, guardians, and the older bloodlines. At the very center, the Core Spire rose, connecting city to Engine like the stem of a flower to its hidden roots.
Now, all those structures glowed with nervous energy.
Harmony lines—normally invisible—were visible to the naked eye. Streams of light raced along bridges and through towers, carrying command-sequences and warning chants. Siren warriors moved in squads along the lower terraces, their armor shaped to flow with their movements, spears and tridents carved from coral reinforced with glimmering metal.
Above the city, huge shapes circled: whale-sized guardians of coral and song, constructs born of art and war. They hung in the water like patient giants.
Even they looked restless.
Out beyond Lyriath, the sea itself had grown still.
The waves didn't break. The swell didn't roll. It lay like a single vast pupil, staring up at the shrouded sky.
Ryainne's fingers flexed around Calypsa's. "Remember this," she said. "Even when it hurts to think about. Remember everything. Songs die when they are forgotten."
"I don't want this song," Calypsa said, voice wobbling.
"Neither do I," Ryainne said. "But it has begun."
A note sounded in the distance—low, drawn-out, aching. Not sung by mortal voice. Not by any instrument.
The world itself had started to hum.
The wind cut out.
The air thickened, pressing in like deep water.
Silence fell over Lyriath, a silence so complete it made the bones itch. It was the kind of silence you only heard in the space between heartbeats and the instant before lightning struck.
Calypsa flinched, clapping her hands over her ears. "It hurts inside."
Ryainne looked up.
A thin line appeared across the sky.
At first she thought it was a trick of the eye—a faint scratch, like a sorcerer's sigil drawn across the firmament. Then she saw stars sliding toward it, their light bending unnaturally.
The line tore wider.
Light did not pour out of it. Light poured into it, dragged backwards, peeled from the world. Clouds twisted, thinning, fraying at the edges as the tear opened, exposing a darkness that was not empty but full.
A shadow pushed through.
It was not a shape the mortal eye was meant to parse. It shifted as she looked at it—a mass of limbs and coils and teeth that were not quite teeth, of eyes upon eyes upon eyes, some as small as beads, one as large as the Harmonic Temple itself. It was every nightmare of the deep given weight and intention.
The water temperature dropped several degrees in an instant. Steam curled up off coral as heat fled. Fish died by the thousands, drifting to the surface in pale drifts.
The Abyssal King slid halfway into the world and stopped, testing the boundaries. His presence alone bent the water and sky around him, forcing reality to strain.
He looked at Lyriath.
More accurately, he looked at the song of Lyriath. At the convergence of harmonies. At the locus of power where mortals had dared to bind gods.
His attention was like a hand pressed against the city's throat.
Calypsa whimpered. Ryainne's own knees nearly buckled, but she held her ground.
A soft swell of light formed beside her, the sea drawing itself into the shape of a towering woman cloaked in waves.
The Tidemother's face was not human, not truly. The curve of cheek and tilt of eyes were suggestions, hints used to make herself approachable. Beneath that, Ryainne felt the endless weight of the deep pressing down.
"You called," the goddess said.
Ryainne almost laughed. Almost.
"I sang warnings for years," she said, voice low and tight. "No one listened."
"Some did," the Tidemother said. "They were outvoted."
"By fear?"
"By habit." The goddess's gaze turned toward the sky, narrowing. "By the comfort of thinking cycles will always reset themselves without cost."
The Abyssal King's tentacles flexed, wrapping around invisible foundations as he pushed further into their reality. Each movement scraped along the boundaries of existence, sending a fresh wave of nausea through anyone sensitive to such things.
Calypsa choked. "Make him go away."
"I cannot," the Tidemother said softly.
"You're a goddess," the child protested, anger flaring through the fear. "You could stop him if you wanted to!"
Ryainne's heart shattered a little at the raw faith in that cry.
"Listen to me, Calypsa," she said. "There are some storms even the gods cannot simply blow aside. Some we can only redirect. Or break ourselves to soften."
"And you're going to break." The words came out flat. Too old.
"Maybe," Ryainne said.
She turned to the Tidemother. "The Engine?"
"It is awake," the goddess replied. "Half-bound, half-raging. It will listen to you and to no other."
"Then that will have to be enough." Ryainne brushed a strand of hair away from Calypsa's face. "I need you to go with the Coral Maidens now."
"No." Calypsa clung to her. "I want to stay with you."
"If you stay, you die," Ryainne said, gentle but relentless. "If you go, there is a chance—small, but real—that you live. And that matters more than my wishes."
"It doesn't matter more than mine," Calypsa said fiercely.
Ryainne smiled. Gods, she loved this child, with a love that felt too large for her chest.
"It does," she said. "Because the song doesn't end with me. It ends if it never reaches the next verse."
"That doesn't make sense," Calypsa said, tears blurring her eyes.
"It will," Ryainne whispered. "One day. When I'm not there to explain it."
The words tasted like poison as she spoke them.
The Tidemother knelt, lowering herself to Calypsa's level, the ocean gathered into a shape gentle enough not to crush.
"Little tide," she said. "You carry more of us in you than you know. You must endure. For all of us."
Calypsa hiccupped, tears running freely now. "Will you bring her back?"
The goddess didn't answer.
That silence was answer enough.
Ryainne kissed her daughter's forehead. "You are the future I won't see," she whispered, the admission tearing something loose inside her. "Live angry if you must. Live sorrowful if you must. But live. And remember."
Calypsa's fingers loosened at last.
The pavilion door behind them flared with coral light as the Coral Maidens arrived—once Sirens like them, now something older and stranger, their bodies part flesh, part living reef. Their eyes glowed softly, voices woven into a single harmonic chord.
One stepped forward and held out a hand to Calypsa.
"We will keep her," she said. "As long as we can."
"Keep her free," Ryainne said. "Not as a relic. As a person."
The Maiden bowed her head. "If the world allows it."
The Abyssal King roared.
It wasn't sound. The coral cracked. The water boiled. The air itself seemed to seize. Sirens on the lower terraces screamed, clutching their heads as invisible claws raked across their souls.
The Coral Maidens pulled Calypsa away.
The girl's scream as she was dragged backwards tore more cleanly through Ryainne than any blade.
Then she was gone, carried into the temple's inner passages.
Ryainne stood alone again.
The Tidemother turned to her. "It is not too late to flee with her."
"We both know that's a lie," Ryainne said. "If I leave, the Engine runs wild. He devours the remains of this Cycle. The next never gets a chance."
The goddess said nothing. Gods were not made for lies either. Not when speaking to those who could hear truth in pitch.
"Will they remember us?" Ryainne asked. "In the next Cycle?"
"Not in the ways you hope," the Tidemother said quietly. "Memory is one of the first things the reset drowns."
"Then I'll make sure something floats."
Ryainne stepped to the center of the terrace, directly above the line where the Harmonic Temple's song-pillar met the city's core. Her bare feet sank into carved grooves worn smooth by generations of ritual.
Far below, the Tide Engine waited.
She closed her eyes and inhaled.
The air burned. Her lungs felt too small for what she was about to do. Her heart beat too fast, as if it were trying to run ahead into the future and hide.
"Ready?" she asked.
The Tidemother's voice was very soft. "No."
"Good," Ryainne said. "Then we match."
She began to sing.
The first note was low, barely audible, more breath than sound. It seeped into the stone and coral, into the water and the cracks of the world. Lyriath answered. The towers thrummed, harmonics rising like a great choir clearing their throats.
She climbed the scale slowly, a siren queen tuning the bones of reality.
The Tide Engine pulsed beneath her, feeling the call. Its sleeping lattice of coral and divine metal shivered, channels opening, reservoirs of power older than empires stirring.
The Tidemother added her voice, flooding the harmony with ocean-weight. Her tone carried storm and stillness, high tide and undertow.
Storm Warden joined next, his contribution cracking across the upper atmosphere, lightning stitching itself between clouds in time with the chord.
The Pearl Seer's high voice slid between them, precise and piercing, picking out threads of fate and tying them into the song, binding specific possibilities close and shredding others before they could form.
Far away, Bound Current listened and, for once, did not try to stop them.
The Abyssal King reacted like a wounded animal.
He lunged fully into the world.
His bulk blotted out the tear in the sky. His tentacles lashed downward, smashing into the ocean. Tidal waves exploded outward in all directions, but the harmony met them, diverting, channeling, turning their devastation into fuel.
His attention locked on Ryainne as the focal point.
He could feel in her song the one thing he despised: limit.
He had never accepted any.
He reached for her.
For a brief, agonizing instant, Ryainne saw through his eyes.
Felt the endless gnawing hunger, the desperate, furious need to consume anything that constrained him. Saw memory-images of other depths, other worlds flooded and broken. Not because he needed them destroyed, but because he could not abide being less than the only thing that mattered.
He would devour every Cycle until only himself and the void remained.
She sang harder.
Her voice climbed to notes no human throat could survive. Harmony had changed her anatomy long ago; still, she felt things tearing. Blood rose in her mouth, but she didn't stop.
The Song of Ending was not meant to be sung by a single mortal and a handful of gods.
Tonight it would be.
Light erupted along the Tide Engine's pathways.
Beneath Lyriath, buried in the bedrock of the ocean, a vast spiral core spun once, twice, thrice. Each rotation dragged power from the gods and from the city's harmonic lattice, braiding them together.
Water rose.
Not in waves this time, but in a column, straight up from the heart of the ocean. It twisted around itself as it rose, forming a translucent tower that punched through the surface and kept going, climbing past Lyriath and reaching toward the Abyssal King.
He met it with a scream that shattered three towers outright.
Sirens below clutched their ears, blood running between their fingers. Some died instantly. Others kept singing, even as their voices cracked.
The column struck the Abyssal King's leading mass.
Light and darkness collided.
For a heartbeat, the world was nothing but blinding radiance and howling absence. Time staggered. Space bent. The harmony threaded between them, trying to force the void back into its crack.
The Abyssal King tore at it with ragged, furious movements, ripping chunks of potential apart, trying to force his own song into the weave.
The gods strained.
Storm Warden's form flickered, lightning people would later call "natural" actually being his blood. The Tidemother's outline frayed at the edges, parts of her dissolving into raw sea. The Pearl Seer bled prophecy, seeing too many futures at once.
"Hold," Ryainne gasped between notes. "Just…hold."
Her bones felt like cracked glass.
Her skin was light now more than flesh. She saw her hands, saw the glow breaking through the thin barrier of what was left of her body.
She turned her head, searching the terrace.
Calypsa was not there. Good. She was a blur of potential in Ryainne's mind, a direction the song could still travel.
She smiled through the pain.
Then she poured everything she had left into a final crescendo.
The column of water and light thickened, flaring bright enough to blind everything with eyes. The song hit a pitch that wasn't meant for human senses—a frequency that reached into the structure of the Cycle itself.
The Abyssal King howled.
The tide of reality buckled.
Something snapped.
Lyriath died.
Not slowly. Not with time for final speeches. The entire city—its towers, its bridges, its gardens, its history—ripped itself apart under the pressure, torn into sparkling dust and shards and raw sound.
The sea above it vaporized. For a breathless moment, there was only void where the ocean had been, a vast, dry wound in the world.
The column surged upward through that empty space and punched into the underside of the Abyssal King's mass.
He recoiled, forced back inch by inch, screaming into the vacuum.
The Song of Ending sealed around him like a cage.
He fell, not physically, but in how deeply he was permitted to exist in this reality. Down, down, down, pushed back into the Trench Below All Trenches, the Abyss given shape and name so it could be contained.
The wound in the sky began to close.
The gods wavered, barely holding their forms.
Ryainne's voice shredded.
Her body finally followed.
She felt herself coming apart piece by piece—not dying in the ordinary sense, but being unmade in this pattern so that other patterns could remain. She did not resist. She only gathered what scraps of self she still held and aimed them in one last direction.
Remember her, she thought, not at any god, but at the world. Carry her.
Her last sight was not of the Abyssal King vanishing, nor of Lyriath's ruins turning to dead stone far below.
It was of a girl with tears on her face, reaching toward her with furious, helpless hands.
The light consumed her.
Sound did not end with her.
The final note of her song hung in the rent air, shimmering, undecided. Around it, the Cycle strained. Bound Current moved, attempting to pin the moment in place, to let it fade into history and myth like all other endings.
But something in that note was…wrong.
Too sharp. Too free.
It snagged on possibility. It caught on every choice Ryainne had made that defied the script the gods had laid down. It tangled with the Tidemother's grief, the Pearl Seer's terror, Storm Warden's reluctant respect.
A shard broke off.
Tiny.
Weightless.
Catastrophic.
The Tidemother reached for it instinctively, hand of water closing around the spark. It slipped through her fingers.
Storm Warden tried to cage it in lightning. It danced along his stormlines and leapt away.
The Pearl Seer saw it for an instant. Her eyes went wide, more with wonder than fear.
"A fate without a thread," she whispered. "A life not written in the Web."
The shard of Echo slipped between the cracks of the Cycle as it reset. It rode the backwash of the ending into the space where beginnings waited, where future ages gestated like dreams.
The Second Cycle burned.
The gods watched silently as its ashes blew into the deep.
The world began to forget. Names faded. Songs unraveled. Coral palaces turned to unremarkable stone. Stories that could have been history became superstition and then nothing.
The shard did not forget.
It drifted, patient and unobserved, through the cold machinery of time. Ages shifted. Landmasses moved. Seas changed shape. New peoples rose and fell. The gods resumed their patterns—guiding, nudging, erasing, resetting.
The shard waited for a crack.
It found one.
In a later age, long after Siren voices had gone quiet, long after Lyriath's ruins sank deep enough to be myth, a Cycle began to strain earlier than expected. Engines slept. Pantheons bickered. Warlords fought over scraps of dead empires.
A storm formed over a black shore.
The shard of Echo shivered, recognizing the rhythm of breaking.
It fell.
It plunged through storm and wind and screaming sky, through the skin of the world, into the chest of a boy who did not yet exist.
His heart stuttered around it.
His fate, which should have woven itself neatly into the Web like every other, tore.
The Cycle did not notice at first.
The gods did not notice at first.
But the sea did.
On a night that would come to be remembered only in quiet, trembling stories, a ship broke apart near a jagged island of black stone. The storm was too wild, too abrupt, too precise to be natural. The sea made decisions that night.
Timbers cracked. Men screamed. Lightning gave brief, violent glimpses of terror-widened eyes and reaching hands before the waves closed over them.
One body sank slower than the others.
Light burned in his chest—small, stubborn, defiant.
The sea wrapped him in currents that should not have met, carried him where no normal tide would flow, and laid him gently on a shore thick with wreckage and old bones.
He did not breathe at first.
Then his chest convulsed, expelling water and a tiny wisp of something that made the air around it shimmer.
The wisp flickered.
Reality shivered around his first breath.
Far away, in places no mortal chart would ever record, the Tidemother stirred in her sleep. Bound Current frowned. The Abyssal King, chained in his trench, opened one eye.
They all felt it.
A spark that did not belong to this Cycle had ignited.
And on Blackstone Isle, with no memories and too many futures, a boy named Kai opened his eyes.